Saturday, September 17, 2011

THE GINGERBREAD MAN LOOSE IN THE SCHOOL (PICTURE BOOK)

I'm the Gingerbread Man,And I'm trying to findThe children who made me,but left me behind.

Looking for the children in this reverse chase, our Gingerbread friend gets a grand tour of the school, and manages to find his friends in the end. Comic-book framing paired with fun, simple illustration and a limited but snazzy palette of browns, greens, turquoise and red makes for visually active pages that are still easy to follow when sharing with a classroom. This cookie is genuinely sweet! (5 and up) For other reads off the cookie sheet, taste-test THE GINGERBREAD GIRL by Lisa Campbell Ernst, or my favorite, Mini Grey's adventurous GINGER BEAR. And don't forget to share the original, newly reprinted with a handsome embossed cover, Paul Galdone's THE GINGERBREAD BOY, which, in combination with the other titles in Galdone's "Folk Tale Classics" series, has comprised my latest baby-gift-of-choice." The children never seem to trust that old fox, no matter how nice he tries to be...for a while, anyway. Oh, well.

And! While we're on the subject of the way the cookie crumbles, there's Jan Brett's busy GINGERBREAD FRIENDS, which is eye candy as much as it is eye cookie, and the Randall Jarrell's beautiful, old-fashioned first chapter-book read-aloud (yes, all you first grade teachers, this is for you!), THE GINGERBREAD RABBIT, illustrated by the great Garth Williams (of whose talents you are acquainted from CHARLOTTE'S WEB.

About Me

Welcome to the Wonderful World of PlanetEsme! I'm a professional readiologist™ who thinks children's trade literature and read-aloud is our best hope for equalizing education in America. I hope this book-a-day plan will be a boon to anyone who would like to play a supporting character in a child's reading life story. This blog is a supporting page to sister site PlanetEsme.com, where you will find a silly amount of additional reviews, thematic lists, links, and much more...everything you need to become an expert in children's literature.

PlanetEsme Classic Archive (1999-2005)

Disclaimer: Due to FTC regulations, please presume that any book reviewed on this site was purchased by PlanetEsme.com for consideration for review, or sent by the author or publisher to PlanetEsme.com as a complimentary copy for consideration for review without obligation.